From the age of five forward, I grew up in a single parent household.  I have no memories of my parents being married to each other and since only one of my parents remarried while I was young and I only saw that parent on occasion, I didn’t grow up with the understanding of what it would be like to have a mother and a father in the same house at the same time.  I was, as you can imagine, insanely jealous of my friends whose parents hadn’t divorced; I so wanted two parents in my house.

Now that I have the fabulous five in my life, I feel like I’m gaining a whole new understanding of why God’s original plan was to have both a mother and father in a committed, loving relationship as they parent their children.   This has been especially true when it comes to Angelina, Juliana and Olivia, mainly because their father, Ryan, and I find ourselves trying to work together to help raise the girls.  We’re not in a romantic relationship (nor do we plan to be), but we’re working very closely together to help these three baby girls along in life.  Typically, however, when I have the girls, I’m on my own because it means he is at work.

I have learned, very quickly, that I cannot do it all nor can I even attempt to do it all by myself.  I’m certainly not a single parent, since none of the girls are actually my children, but I certainly feel like a single mother a lot of the time.  Because of feeling this way, I’m experiencing a whole new level of gratefulness towards those around me who are helping me with the girls.

A couple of weeks ago, before heading to Knoxville for MacKenzie’s school orientation, I picked Angelina up from school only to find out that she had “meet the teacher” that very night.   I was immediately conflicted, but decided that since I had already made a promise to MacKenzie, I would go to her school.  I whipped out my cell phone, called one of my college girls, Anna, and within minutes, had a promise from Anna that she would go with Angelina to her school orientation and stand-in for me.

Anna took notes for me, explained the situation to the teacher, everything.  When I got back late that night from Knoxville, both girls had successfully attended a school orientation with a female presence in their life — which was the goal all along.

Last week, the girls asked me if we could invite Gosling (they call him “Papa Gosling”) to have dinner with us.   Almost every night of the week that I have the girls, they all want to know if we can call Papa Gosling.  Since Papa Gosling has a life outside of five squiggly little girls, I typically say no but, since they were begging, I decided we’d at least try.  We called and, sure enough, he had just enough time to meet us for a quick bite before he had to be at a meeting.

The whole time we ate, Papa Gosling played with the girls while I enjoyed a meal in peace.  This whole help from your friends thing is worth its weight in gold.